Last week was a big one at the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices issued eight opinions and only two argued cases remain undecided. The decisions this week covered cell phone searches, abortion clinic buffer zones and greenhouse gas regulation. The remaining cases consider employee health coverage for contraception and compulsory union dues.
Only two cases left
There are only two cases left to decide this term and opinions are expected Monday 6/30/14 at 10am. Check out the SCOTUSblog live coverage here. The cases are:
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. The case considers whether business owners can, because of their own religious views, deny employees health insurance coverage for contraception.
Harris v. Quinn Presents a direct challenge to the decades old practice of supporting public employee unions through compulsory dues from all employees, union members or not.
Decisions issued the week of 6/23/14
Loughrin v. United States. Here the court held that the intent to defraud the bank is not an element of the federal crime of bank fraud.
Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA wherein the court generally approved of the EPA using the clean air act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund allows a law suit filed by a group of investors against Halliburton to proceed. The investors claim that Halliburton made fraudulent misrepresentations which affected the stock price and cost them money.
Riley v. California held that warrantless searches of arrestee’s cell phones are generally unconstitutional. Read my post about the case here.
Fifth Third Bancorp v. Dudenhoeffer holds that fiduciaries of employer stock ownership plans do not enjoy a “presumption of prudence” regarding decisions to buy or hold the employer’s stock. Whatever that means.
American Broadcasting Cos. v. Aereo, Inc. Aereo’s business was to rent customers a small TV antenna, store it at their facility and then stream the programming it received to the user through the internet. The Supreme Court held that this is a copyright violation.
McCullen v. Coakley Here the court stuck down a Massachusetts law making it a crime to stand on a road or sidewalk within 35 feet of an abortion clinic. The law violates the first amendment.
NLRB v. Noel Canning holds that the President can’t make recess appointments when the senate is in session, even if the “session” is just a pro forma scheme designed to prevent the recess appointments.
The other big news
A lot of what I know about these cases, I learned through SCOTUSblog. Some of the most troubling news of the week was that the blog was denied renewal of its senate press credentials. The committee that issues the credentials found the blog failed to show, as rules require, that it is editorially independent from any entity that is not a news organization or which lobbies the federal government.
The blog was founded and is published by Tom Goldstein. His firm represents clients before the court, and so the blog follows rules of editorial independence and discloses any association between covered cases and Goldstein’s practice. It turns out this was not enough for the committee. For all the handwringing over independence, it’s worth nothing that the committee grants credentials to journalists employed by foreign governments and business interests. Here is earlier coverage of the situation, and here is Goldstein’s response to the denial.
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